When you talk power utilities on any *nix it’s hard to skip nmap. Ever since it’s introduction nmap has been used for good and evil. If you’ve ever had a server hacked chances are they used nmap or some sort of nmap code to get the job done. Just how easy is it to detect the server type from nmap? Try my windows 2003 server (I know kick me in the nuts and call me sally).
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Ping is a great utility to use to test if a server is up or if a server is responding in the correct time, but what if you could use ping to actually test your network infrastructure. Lets call it a “poor mans test”.

Linux ping allows you to specify the number of bytes that are sent to the server your pinging.
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SSH allows you to do key sharing which allows you to log into a machine without typing your password, or even for that matter, having a password at all. Best of all, it does the key sharing completely encrypted, so the chance of you losing your keys in the process is very unlikely.

In my example I have 2 machines. A desktop and server.  I want to be able to connect to server without entering my password.
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Firewalls are important for safety on the internet, but sometimes they just get in the way, so why not remedy that by using what you can to your advantage. At my home I am required to have an SSH connection back to the office. The office is able to connect to all of our remote sites, but  I am not able to have VNC to my home, so I must tunnel VNC. In order to do that I do a SSH local port forward

ssh john@example.com -L8080:127.0.0.1:5590

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